Au koto no kata wa sanomi zo futagaramu hitoyo meguri no kimi to omoeba

English Translation

The way to meet you
must always be blocked like this
since I think of you
as the god who shifts his place
to somewhere new each one night

Meaning

Of course the way to you is always blocked — when I think of you as that god who moves to a new place every single night.

Commentary

8 The God Who Moves Each Night

While the Prince of the Ministry of Central Affairs was visiting the Lady of the Palace Guards, he sent word that the direction was closed to him and that he could not come that night, and she sent "Au koto no kata wa sanomi zo futagaramu hitoyo meguri no kimi to omoeba" in reply. The direction was closed all the same, but the prince came and stayed. Later, after a long silence, he sent word that he had been hunting at the Saga retreat and so had not written, and that she must have been anxious; and she sent "Ōsawa no ike no mizukuki taenu tomo nanika uramimu saga no tsurasa wa" in reply. His answer to it, perhaps because it fell short of the poem before, has been forgotten. That is the whole of the section.
The Lady of the Palace Guards appears repeatedly in this book, with poems in the tenth and seventy-first sections among others. Her title is that of a middle-ranking woman official at court. Of the Prince of the Ministry of Central Affairs the prose tells us nothing beyond the office his title names.
The setting is a night on which the prince was expected. A closed direction is a matter of the diviners' art: on certain days travel in certain directions was held to invite misfortune. The prince used this as his reason for not coming.
What prompted the poem was that message of refusal. It was sent as her reply.
Afterwards, though the direction remained closed, the prince came and stayed the night. A single poem had moved him, and the section then goes on to a long silence and the poem that answers it.

The name in the fourth line belongs to a deity of the diviners' art believed to change his station every night.
Taking up the prince's excuse about a closed direction, she turns it round: the blockage is not the fault of any direction, but of a man who moves on to somewhere new each night. She borrows his own word and shifts its sense.
The demonstrative in the second line points back at his excuse, and the particle of limitation makes it a standing habit: this is simply how it always turns out. An emphatic particle governs the verb that follows.
The last line gives the reason and closes the argument: because she thinks of him so, the way is blocked. The reproach does not sting because it is made through the name of a god, and the prince's coming that same night can be read as an answer to that way of putting it.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other